A Path from Slavery to Freedom: The Case of the Ologoudou Family in Southern Benin

Abstract

What can family biographies, life stories and memories of individuals tell us about the sociohistorical transformations of domestic slavery in Benin? By focusing on the generational dynamics of the former slave Ologoudou familly, this article attempts to shed some light on how economic, social or school trajectories have influenced the situation of descendants of slaves in Benin over the generations. The case of the Ologoudou family, descended from a Yoruba slave who arrived in Ouidah in the mid-nineteenth century, shows that domestic slaves, placed under particular conditions, may have had the capacity to take their fate into their own hands and not only to be passive beings as they are often described.

Burying at all costs: investing in funerals in southern Benin

“…'the Fon language') is the main local language in use in southern Benin. The original version of the maxim translated here is 'axᴐ wε e nyi bo mi non su'.5 In this genre, probably the most eloquent example is this Yoruba song I heard a few times in Yoruba mortuary rituals in some of Ouidah's lineages of slave descent (on domestic slavery in southern Benin, seeLaw 2004: 189-226;Noret 2008;Lempereur 2020): 'I have engendered[bis], but it does not make children, unless they kill a ram[bis], to sacrifice to their father'in the local (here unpunctuated) Yoruba: 'Mon bi [bis], ki i s'omo, af'eni o r'agbo [bis], bo baba re. '…”